major treatment

For Heidegger, the human subject had to be reconceived in an altogether new way, as “being-in-the-world.” Because this notion represented the very opposite of the Cartesian “thing that thinks,” the idea of consciousness as representing the mind’s internal awareness of its own states had to be dropped. With it went the assumption that specific mental states were needed to...

place in existentialism

...existence is always a being-in-the-world—i.e., in a concrete and historically determinate situation that limits or conditions choice. Humans are therefore called
Dasein (“there being”) because they are defined by the fact that they exist, or are in the world and inhabit it.

...Flight of Ideas”), inspired by Heidegger’s thought, viewed the origin of mental illness as a failure in the existential possibilities that constitute human existence (
Dasein). From Jaspers and Binswanger, the existentialist current became diffused and variously stated in contemporary psychiatry.

role in Heidegger’s philosophy

...address that question properly, Heidegger found it necessary to undertake a preliminary phenomenological investigation of the Being of the human individual, which he called
Dasein. In that endeavour he ventured onto philosophical ground that was entirely untrodden.

...questions are set aside in order to address a variety of concerns pertaining to the “being for which its own being is an issue”—the human subject, which Heidegger calls “
Dasein” (literally, “being there”) in order to stress subjectivity’s worldly and existential features. Heidegger contends, in a manner reminiscent of Kant’s transcendental...

...consciousness can finally demarcate the essential sense of a thing. Thus, Heidegger discarded the very concept of consciousness and proposed a “fundamental ontology” of human being (
Dasein). Man as a subject in the world cannot be made the object of sophisticated theoretical conceptions such as “substance” or “cause”; man, furthermore, finds himself...

...of asking the question—concerning Being, who precisely through this capability occupies a privileged position in regard to all other beings—viz., that of
Dasein (literally, “being there”). By conceiving of
Dasein as being-in-the-world, Heidegger made the ancient problem concerning the...